


Suspicion

by aliaoftwoworlds



Series: Bitter Retribution [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Author is Bitter, Civil War Team Iron Man, Gen, Not Steve Friendly, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), not team Cap friendly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-04-04 18:07:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14025741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliaoftwoworlds/pseuds/aliaoftwoworlds
Summary: The Rogues are back at the Compound, but Tony is acting suspicious and they’re determined to find out why. They might not like what they find.





	Suspicion

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first in my new series of extra-bitter post-CW scenarios. Some will be more realistic and fit well within canon, others will be a little more out there and AU-ish. The setting for this first one is similar to my other post-CW consequences story Facing Reality except in this one, the Rogues were pardoned after only a few months away, not three years. 
> 
> Amilie is an OC in some of my marvel fics (I have an entire long fic that actually explains her but it’s only half-planned and I might not ever actually write it). All you need to know for this is that “resonance” is something a few people (including Tony) are able to do in order for them to briefly share some of her powers during combat.

Steve narrowed his eyes as he stood on one of the balconies and watched the woman enter the Compound. He’d seen her at least a dozen times in the few weeks since he and his team had returned to the Compound, but he still didn’t know who she was or what she was doing there. All he knew was that she was doing something with Tony, and he didn’t like it.

They’d been pardoned and returned to the US almost a month ago now, and tensions were still high between his team and Tony’s. There were new people on the roster that Tony had added in their absence, but despite his initial hopes for cohesion, they’d all sneered at Steve and his team from the beginning. Wanda had been provoked into attacking one of them during training in the first week, and they used the excuse to ship her off to some training facility, claiming she wasn’t ready to be in the field yet. Obviously they’d been corrupted by Tony when he was the only one around to give opinions on Steve’s team.

Steve’s team wasn’t too happy about having them in their space, either. Having to work around the new members was irritating, and they had all kinds of new “rules” in place that seemed to be designed specifically to make Steve’s team’s jobs harder. Sometimes, seeing the hostility they were encountering, he was glad that Bucky wasn’t being put through it all with them. Bucky was still in cryo in Wakanda, no one having come up with any reasonable solution to his triggers yet. But when they did, he had a pardon waiting for him as well. Hopefully, by then, they’d have everything worked out back home.

He’d hoped, coming back, that they could get past what had happened. The few months they’d spent in Wakanda should have been enough for Tony to calm down and see where he’d gone wrong. But despite coming back willing to work things out, to try to forgive Tony and move past what had happened, he’d been rebuffed at every turn. Tony avoided him, and the rest of his team, as much as he possibly could. He was living in the Compound along with Rhodes and Vision, but the wing where their rooms were located was off-limits to Steve’s team. They didn’t train together, they didn’t eat meals together, they barely saw one another.

When they did see him, Tony was on edge, defensive, snarky, and overall acting like a child. He’d barely talked to Steve for more than a minute at a time since they’d returned, and when they did talk, everything he said was tense and covered in six layers of sarcasm. Most of the time, he avoided having to talk to Steve or any of his team by having Rhodes act as his personal guard dog, snarling at anyone who approached Tony and taking over conversations in his stead.

His team was getting increasingly annoyed with Tony’s attitude, on top of the problems they’d already had with him. Having landed them all in the Raft, forcing them to go into exile for months, keeping Clint from his family all that time, all because Tony couldn’t admit when he was wrong… well, none of them were very happy with Tony. Add to that what Tony had done in Siberia, and they were positively seething. Steve hadn’t told them all the details of Siberia—that was too personal, and despite Tony’s bad attitude, Steve was still respectful enough not to tell the others every detail—but they knew that Tony had attacked Steve and Bucky unreasonably, that he’d blown Bucky’s arm off, and that Steve had had to disable his suit just to get him to stop trying to kill them.

In a continuation of his tantrum, Tony was now refusing to design or produce anything for Steve or his team, even though he obviously made the gear for all of the other Avengers. They weren’t allowed in his lab anymore either, ostensibly because they weren’t allowed to access his tech, but it was this that gave Steve the worst feeling.

Tony was hiding something, that was obvious from the moment they’d come back. The way he avoided them, particularly Steve, was suspicious in itself. Locking them out of his lab and spending most of his time in there was worse. And now this, this strange woman Steve had seen coming into the Compound several times a week, each time going straight to Tony’s lab, staying for an hour or more, then immediately leaving. She carried a small black bag with her, full of some kind of tools, he was sure, or maybe tech or raw materials for Tony. Tony was building something in that lab, something dangerous no doubt, trying to hide it from Steve and his team just like he’d done with Ultron.

Clint and Sam joined him on the balcony and noticed him glaring down at the woman as she entered. “Who’s she?” Sam asked.

“I don’t know, but she’s doing something with Tony,” Steve said, turning to give them a significant look. “In secret.”

He could see the slight alarm on both their faces when they got it. “Shit,” Clint said. “You mean like Ultron secret?”

“Maybe. I tried to ask him about it a while ago, but of course he wouldn’t talk to me.”

“What’s he need the woman for?” Sam said with a frown.

“I don’t know. I don’t know who she is. I tried to talk to her once when she was leaving, but she just said she was busy and left. She said her name was Kelly, but that was it.”

“Maybe he needs an expert for something,” Clint said. “He had Bruce for Ultron, but even if he was around now, he wouldn’t do something that stupid again. So Stark had to find someone else, someone from the outside.”

That made sense. “I wonder how much he’s even told her,” Steve mused. “I’d like to talk to her, see exactly what she’s gotten herself into, but I don’t think she’ll talk to me.”

“Maybe she doesn’t need to,” Clint said, turning to face Steve. He leaned in to speak in a low voice, and Steve and Sam leaned their heads forward as well. “There’s still vents I can get through in here, and some of them go right to Stark’s labs. I could plant a bug in there, listen in and find out what the hell he’s doing.”

Sam shook his head. “Aren’t the vents monitored? The AI would see you and tell him.”

Clint grinned. “Not if Nat can disable the thing. Just for a bit, not long. I just need to be able to get in, plant the bug, and get out again. I’ll use one of the ones from my old arrows, Stark made them himself. They’ve got an electromagnetic cloak, or something. Shouldn’t be detectable, even by Stark’s own AI.”

Steve frowned. “Won’t the AI alert Tony that it was disabled? He could trace it back to Natasha and get her in trouble.”

“Give Nat some credit, she’s broken into Stark’s systems before. She can do it so that the thing thinks it’s just a little glitch, might not even report it to Stark. And even if it does, he won’t know that anything happened while it was off. He’ll go back to the lab and act like normal, thinking it was just a glitch and now it’s fixed.”

Steve thought it over for a moment. “Okay, if you’re sure, let’s talk it over with Nat.”

They broke apart and headed back to their respective tasks, trying to act normal. That afternoon, Clint explained the situation to Natasha, and she agreed to disable the AI long enough for Clint to get into the vents and place a bug. In order to maximize the chance that the bug wouldn’t be discovered before they could hear anything of use, they agreed to do it the next time they saw Kelly entering the Compound. They’d keep a lookout for her outside, and as soon as they saw her coming in, they’d set everything in motion. Sam would watch Natasha’s back, making sure no one would come across her at the access point in the wall she would break into in order to disrupt the AI. Clint would enter the vents from Sam’s room, which was the closest private area to Stark’s labs. They could get closer entering from one of the common areas, but they couldn’t guarantee that the common areas would be empty when Kelly showed up. Clint would only need a couple minutes to get in and out, and by the time Kelly got to the lab, they would have the bug in place and the AI would be back online, none the wiser.

It was three days later that the time came. Despite his nerves, Steve felt the steady determination that always accompanied missions for him. This was important, and they could be saving a lot of lives by doing this. If Tony was really creating another Ultron, they needed to know, so they could stop him.

The plan went off without a hitch, thankfully. Nat and Sam joined him in Sam’s room a minute after Clint dropped back down from the vent, replacing the cover perfectly. Clint reported that the bug was in place, Nat said she’d shut down the AI with no problem, and Clint activated the bug. “It’s directional,” Clint muttered as he fiddled with the screen the audio feed was playing out on, “so if they’re at the other end of the lab and we’re not getting a good feed, we can adjust it.”

They didn’t end up needing to adjust it at all; the conversation started up just underneath the vent where the bug had been placed. It was all going perfectly. There was some rustling and a few pleasantries exchanged between Tony and Kelly. Steve was practically holding his breath and knew the others were doing the same as they gathered around the screen. 

“Hey, Doc.” That was Rhodes, which momentarily surprised Steve. Rhodes had always seemed level-headed, Steve didn’t think he’d get himself involved in something dangerous and reckless like another Ultron-type project. But then again, the man’s biggest flaw was his ridiculous loyalty to Tony, no matter what kind of trouble Tony got him into. Maybe Steve shouldn’t have been surprised that he’d follow his best friend into such a mess.

“Hello Colonel, glad you could join us.” There was a pause and a little more background noise, then Tony’s voice came over the speaker.

“So, I guess we’ll get right to it.” A sigh followed the words. Steve’s heart was pounding in his chest. “What’s the damage?”

Steve’s heart sank at the words. So there was already some sort of a problem. Hopefully not one of a catastrophic nature.

“I’ve looked over the latest MRI,” Kelly’s voice said, and Steve’s brow furrowed. MRI? Were they experimenting with biological life, trying to build something like another Vision?

“That doesn’t look like your ‘bad news’ face,” Tony said, a note of hope in his voice.

There was some more rustling, sounding like Kelly was pulling out a sheet of paper. “No, it’s not bad news at all. See here? Compare it to the last one. The fibrotic area of the right lung is actually reduced.”

“That’s good, right?” Rhodes said. “That means he’s healing.”

“That’s not healing. Fibrosis doesn’t heal, it’s permanent. That’s… something else.”

“What?”

“Resonance.” That was Tony’s voice. The word didn’t mean anything to Steve, but before he could exchange a confused look with any of the others, Tony continued, “I breathe better when I’m resonating. I’ve noticed it before. It’s not enough to really notice day to day, but definitely while it’s happening. I thought it was just the connection enhancing everything, but if it’s actually changing me physically, that would explain this.”

It took Steve a minute to realize that they were talking about Tony. Kelly was a doctor, a medical doctor, and they were discussing Tony’s medical information. Feeling slightly wrong-footed, Steve had an urge to tell Clint to turn the bug off. They shouldn’t be listening in on Tony’s conversations with his doctor. But when he looked up, the others were still staring at the screen, fascinated, and Steve had another thought. It sounded like the doctor was saying something impossible was happening to Tony, which meant he _was_ doing something unnatural. Maybe he wasn’t building another murderous robot, but it sounded like maybe he was experimenting on himself, which could be even worse. Whatever “resonance” was, it could be dangerous. The last thing anyone needed was Tony turning himself into another Hulk, so Steve stayed quiet and kept listening.

“That would explain it, yes,” Kelly’s voice said. “I know we’ve already discussed it, but it correlates with the readings we’ve taken when you’re working with Amilie. It seems that resonating with her really is healing you. I’d revise my previous estimate of a month.”

Amilie was one of the newcomers to the team, an Elemental. Steve had heard something about her being able to share her powers with people on the battlefield, and that seemed to make sense with what the doctor was saying to Tony. Apparently a side effect of sharing power with her was that old damage to his lungs was being repaired. It was interesting, certainly, but nothing they needed to be privy to. Steve was starting to feel embarrassed for having allowed this entire elaborate setup, just to discover that Tony was having “secret” doctor’s appointments. 

He was about to tell Clint to turn it off, apologize to the others for getting them worked up for nothing, when Kelly spoke again. “Please, Tony, I know you. This is minimal progress so far. It’s progress, yes, but it’s not absolute. You can still hurt yourself. _Please_ , don’t confuse ‘no longer dying within a month’ with ‘absolutely healthy and totally free to go and do all the dangerous, physically demanding hero work you want.’”

That caught Steve’s attention, and he noticed some of the others shift and lean in further as well, suddenly more interested. Had she just said “dying within a month?” What was that supposed to mean?

“But I _am_ healing.” 

“Yes, but we have no absolute guarantee that it will continue, or how far it’ll go. For all we know, it’s only going to repair some of the fibrotic tissue, not give you full strength back in your ribcage, or fix any of the damage to your heart.”

“Aren’t you just the optimist,” Tony muttered. 

“Tones.” That was Rhodes, reprimanding and sympathetic at the same time.

There was a sigh. “Sorry,” Tony said.

“It’s fine,” Kelly said, “I can understand the frustration. For what it’s worth, I really do think the healing’s going to continue. We know the strength in your sternum’s already improving, and I don’t think it’s just a coincidence. I just don’t want to give you a guarantee, only to find out we were wrong.”

“Yeah,” Tony said with another sigh. “But even if it stops, I’ve still gotten something out of it already. If nothing else was going to change and you had to look at that by itself, right now, how long would you give me?”

There was a pause. “It’s hard to say, you know this is all an estimate. But with the fibrosis still present and the state of your ribcage, even at this point, I’d say that’s still going to be the number one problem, not your heart. If I were to look at this alone and assume nothing else is going to improve, right now, I’d say you’ve got three to six months.”

Steve found himself blinking at the screen showing the audio feed, shocked. Three to six months to _live_? What the hell had happened? Tony had told them when he got the arc reactor removed from his chest that his heart was permanently damaged and had cut his life expectancy down to around sixty, maybe sixty five if he was lucky, but nothing this drastic. Had he lied to them? Or was this something that had happened between then and now? The only thing Steve could think of was one of their battles, maybe Ultron, or even… 

“That’s it, still?” Rhodes asked.

Now it was Kelly’s turn to sigh. “A vibranium shield to the chest is no joke. Combined with all the other trauma sustained during that fight, and it just overwhelmed the body. Tony’s just a human, and human bones aren’t meant to stand up to a super soldier’s strength under normal circumstances, definitely not when they’re already weakened by the kind of surgeries Tony’s had.”

Steve was frozen in place, staring down at the screen. The room was utterly silent around him except for the audio feed. He didn’t look up at the others, but he could see that Clint’s knuckles had gone white where they were gripping the tablet. 

“I thought you said the cold protected him a bit,” Rhodes said over the feed.

“The cold slowed the internal bleeding and the kinds of inflammatory processes that would have killed him before he got to the hospital. It saved his life, but it couldn’t prevent the permanent damage. Nothing could stop that.”

There was an inelegant snort from Tony. “Yeah, I owe my life to Rogers for ditching me in Siberia, of all places. If I’d been trapped in a dead suit for twelve hours in the Bahamas, I’d be dead. But hey, Rogers would be happy, laying there trying not to choke on blood for half a day at least gave me time to calm down about Barnes. I’m sure he’d be delighted to know I don’t blame his best buddy for beating my dad’s face in or strangling my mom anymore. Standing there and watching it on video was pretty fucking bad, but when I had time to really think, I knew it wasn’t Barnes’s fault.”

Steve finally found the strength to look up, and immediately wished he hadn’t. All of the others were staring at him, their faces twisted in various expressions of shocked horror. The tablet was practically forgotten, loose in Clint’s hand, but when Kelly’s voice started coming from it again, Clint reached down and shut the audio off without looking at it.

The room was totally silent. Steve felt himself shrinking down under the accusing looks of the others. The silence stretched on for agonizing seconds, until finally, Clint said in practically a whisper, “Steve, what the _fuck_.”

Steve glanced helplessly between Clint, Natasha, and Sam. Sam was actually leaning back and away from him, like he couldn’t stand to be so physically close to him, and even Natasha looked more disturbed than Steve had ever seen her.

“I—I didn’t…” he started, stammering, barely able to force the words out. He swallowed hard and continued. “I didn’t know I’d hurt him like that,” he finally said, barely a whisper.

Sam made a strangled sound. “How do you hurt someone that badly and _not know_? And then you left him there, in a broken suit? That he was stuck in? You never leave a man behind, Steve, _never_. You don’t even leave an injured enemy out on the battlefield, much less a teammate. What the hell is wrong with you, man?”

Steve sucked in a short breath, feeling the weight of their accusations. “I was protecting Bucky. Tony attacked him, took his arm off. He was going to kill him. I had to stop him.”

“When one of your friends gets into a fight with another, you hold him back, you don’t beat him down. Everyone knows that,” Sam said grimly.

“He attacked Bucky because, what, Bucky killed his fucking parents?” Clint asked, running a shaking hand through his hair and letting out a short, slightly hysterical laugh. “You failed to mention that bit the first time around.”

“He was brainwashed,” Steve said immediately. “It wasn’t really him. It was HYDRA.”

“Did he say he watched it on a video? Because holy shit, man, I can hardly blame him.” Clint raised his hands up to hair again, this time gripping it, looking around like he was lost.

“It wasn’t him,” Steve insisted desperately. His gaze shifted to Natasha, she’d been there when they’d learned it, she knew it wasn’t Bucky. But she was looking at him like she was seeing him for the first time.

“You said you told him,” she said slowly, quietly.

“What?”

Natasha looked him in the eyes, and there was something dangerous in her gaze. “You told me you were going to tell Tony. You made me promise not to, because you said you were going to do it. You lied to me. You let him find out in Siberia?”

Sam jerked. “Wait, you _knew_? You knew about this, and what, just decided you didn’t need to tell Stark?” He shook his head, looking stunned. “Jesus Christ. I need some air.” He turned and marched from the room, leaving Steve standing there helplessly.

He looked back at Clint, who was looking at him with even more horror than before. “Holy shit. I—I don’t even know you, man. What the hell. Shit.” He backed away from Steve like he was a rabid animal, then turned and left the room as well. Natasha just shook her head at Steve and followed Clint out.

Once everyone had gone, Steve collapsed down onto the bed heavily, belatedly remembering that it was Sam’s; he was in Sam’s room. He forced himself up on rubbery legs and went back to his own room, thankfully not encountering anyone else on the way. He fell onto his own bed and spent the rest of the day just lying there in a daze.

He really hadn’t known he’d hurt Tony that badly. Tony had been talking to him when he’d left the bunker with Bucky, gasping and sounding weak, yeah, but still talking. And he’d moved in the suit at least a little, propping himself up even after the arc reactor had been crushed. But Steve remembered a conversation from long ago, talking about failsafes in the suit…

_“The suit itself holds a tiny reserve charge. For things like basic movement. It lasts a few seconds.”_

_“Why? If it only lasts a few seconds, seems pointless.”_

_Tony smiled. “Pointless to you, maybe, but not for me. If the reactor ever gets totally destroyed, I need those extra few seconds to get out of the suit so I can get a new one. The suit weighs over four hundred pounds, Cap, and it’s made of metal. Maybe you could force those joints to move with no power, but I can’t. If the power fails completely, I’m pretty much stuck in it.”_

It hadn’t been important, at the time, and Steve never would have thought about it in Siberia. He’d just been so focused on getting Bucky out, so angry at Tony’s betrayal, at him attacking Bucky when he _knew_ Bucky was innocent. Not that that seemed to matter to Tony, or to the others, for that matter. They all seemed to think that Tony had been justified, suddenly, because they learned about what HYDRA had forced Bucky to do. A small, honest part of his mind can hardly blame them. He knew that he’d screwed up badly by not telling Tony about his parents earlier. But he’d been occupied with other things, and he’d been searching for Bucky and didn’t want Tony to have a fit and pull his funding, and it had been so long ago. When was it ever going to come up again? But it had come up, and in the worst way possible. And now everyone was angry at him for it. 

He never got up from his bed at all, not even to get ready for bed. He finally fell asleep sometime around three in the morning, slept fitfully for a few hours, then woke up early, feeling somehow less rested than earlier.

He had training that morning, and as much as he didn’t want to see the others, he would have to face them eventually. Maybe with time to think about it, they would have calmed down. _Laying there trying not to choke on blood for half a day at least gave me time to calm down_.

The others eventually joined him in their common kitchen for breakfast, but none of them would make eye contact with him. They avoided him as they moved around. Sam’s posture looked defeated, and Clint had dark bags under his eyes like he hadn’t slept all night.

He was just considering saying something to them when the door to their kitchen opened, and Tony came striding in, flanked by several of his security people and a woman in a sharp suit. Steve’s stomach dropped. He knew without having to guess; Tony had somehow found out about what they’d done.

The others had frozen in place at their entrance, and were looking warily at Tony. “Barton, Romanoff,” Tony said, and Clint and Natasha both stepped forward slightly. Steve saw a slight flicker of surprise on Tony’s face that they were actually cooperating with him. “Your stay at the Compound has ended. Pack your stuff and get the hell out. Romanoff, expect to hear from my lawyers.”

“What?” Clint croaked, while Natasha just stood impassively, staring Tony down.

“The terms of your residence at the Compound were pretty clear,” Tony said, addressing Clint, “don’t break any rules, don’t do anything stupid. Obviously you couldn’t handle that. I’d ask you what the hell you were thinking, but frankly, I don’t care. You’re gone, both of you.”

“What did they do?” Steve asked, even though it hurt him just to look at Tony. Clint turned his head to briefly glare Steve’s way.

“Romanoff here hacked into FRIDAY and messed with her code, yesterday at exactly 3:46 P.M. She caused a temporary blackout of several areas of the Compound, sloppy work I might add,” he said with a scathing look in Nat’s direction, “that was meant to register as just a momentary glitch. But FRIDAY and I are smarter than that. I don’t know the exact purpose of the blackout, but she could have accessed any number of classified files on the server during that time, not to mention the damage to _my_ AI. I will be pressing charges.”

He sniffed and turned away from Natasha. “You, Mr. Barton, were crawling around in the vents at the same time. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence; somehow I doubt it. An independently powered biometric scanner in the venting system tagged you twice. It was meant to identify potential threats or biological contaminants, but it can do people too. Since FRIDAY’s blackout prevented her from knowing where exactly you were in the vent system, I can only assume you went everywhere. Now, there are a lot of people living at the Compound, many of them girls, a lot of them underage. I’ve got to say, they’re pretty uncomfortable with the idea of you crawling around in the vents above them, watching them change or get in the shower.”

Clint made a choked sound. “That’s not—I’d never—”

“Well, unfortunately, I have no proof of that, Barton. You’re not being charged with anything, but your residence at the Compound has officially been terminated. Please go pack your things, both of you.” He turned to regard Natasha again as well. “You have one hour to vacate the Compound. If you return, you will be trespassing and I will involve the police.” He turned and strode from the room. The woman in the suit followed him along with two of the security people, but one stayed behind, stationing himself in the corner of the kitchen, watching Clint and Natasha. Steve supposed he was there to make sure they left by the deadline.

“Shit,” Clint said, once more reaching up and pulling at his hair. He whirled to face Steve. “This is all your fault,” he snarled.

Steve’s mouth worked, shocked by his vehemence, but Natasha reached out and put a hand on Clint’s arm, then leaned in to whisper something in his ear. Clint continued to glare at Steve for a few more seconds, but eventually his face fell and he stepped back. He made a disgusted noise and turned to walk back down the hall to his room to pack his things. Natasha turned and followed him without even looking back at Steve.

The silence in kitchen between Steve and Sam was deafening. Sam continued slowly moving about, finishing his breakfast in one corner and then going to wash his dishes, but the tension in the air was practically palpable. Finally, unable to stand it, Steve got up and wandered down the hall to their bedrooms, hearing movements from inside Clint’s. When he rounded the corner, Natasha was already standing there with her single bag packed, holding her phone to her ear. 

“We’re leaving in just a minute,” she was saying, “I’ll text you when we’re close. Tell the kids I said hi.”

She ended the call and stood facing into Clint’s room. “You’re going to stay with Laura?” Steve asked, but she ignored him, and then Clint emerged from his room, haphazardly packed bag over his shoulder. 

“Let’s go,” he said tersely to Natasha, who nodded and turned to move down the hall past Steve.

“I’m sorry,” Steve burst out, taking a step after them. He hadn’t meant to get them into this, to get them kicked out. He hadn’t meant to hurt Tony either. He hadn’t meant a lot of things.

Natasha once again ignored him, but Clint turned to look at Steve over his shoulder, expression bitter. “You’re a fucking liar, Steve. Why would I believe you’re sorry?” He turned back and strode down the hallway. As he retreated, he said loudly, “I hope he throws your ass out too.”

Steve just stood in the hallway and watched them go, feeling the splintering of his friendships, heart colder than when he’d gone into the ice.

**Author's Note:**

> Scott wasn’t in this story because (a) I haven’t seen Ant Man and don’t know that much about his personality so I don’t write a lot with him, (b) there were already plenty of characters involved and I didn’t want to crowd the story too much, and (c) I forgot about him until I was halfway through writing it. Lol.
> 
> I left Clint with Laura in this one for convenience and because it’s only been a few months, maybe little enough time that she would consider forgiving him instead of just dumping his deadbeat ass.


End file.
